Chapter 11 #2
He brushed her cheek with his fingertips, laid his fingers lightly on her lips. “There are a lot of things I haven’t believed in for a long time. But you’ve changed that.”
She gazed into his eyes, filled with passion and promise, and believed him.
As crazy, as improbable as it seemed, she believed he loved her.
Guilt crushed her heart like a vise. God, she wanted so much to tell him about her past. But she was a coward.
She was afraid to see that loving look in his eyes turn to disgust. Disgust for who she was.
For the lie she’d lived for fourteen years.
The lie she would continue to live. Instead she put her arms around his neck and whispered, “Kiss me, Devlin.”
His mouth against hers was as tender and loving as a dream, and the night bled into dawn.
* * *
“Damn,” Devlin muttered, as he nicked himself while shaving the next morning.
What in the hell was wrong with the dog?
Rocky’s frantic barking and growling were ear-splitting, even in the bathroom with the door closed.
He scraped the last of his beard off, rinsed Gabrielle’s razor, and reached for a towel, slinging it around his neck.
“Get out!” he heard Gabrielle shout as he walked into the living room. She had her hands wrapped around Rocky’s collar and was straining to hold her back. “I told you not?—”
“Call off the dog,” Franco Sabatino said. “Call the damned thing off or I’ll gut it.”
Devlin halted at the hall doorway and stared.
Sabatino? What the hell was he doing there?
Gabrielle continued to struggle with Rocky, who lunged at the intruder, slavering, teeth bared and out for blood, as vicious as any junkyard mongrel.
He couldn’t believe this was the same dog who’d welcomed him with tail-wagging adoration the night before, when he’d broken into Gabrielle’s house.
The rest of their words were drowned out in the furious cacophony the dog set up, but he saw Sabatino reach inside his jacket.
Devlin was already moving toward him when the sun bounced a ray off hard steel.
Six inches long and gleaming wickedly, the knife was raised high, poised to strike.
He launched himself at Sabatino’s knife hand, dimly hearing Gabrielle’s shout.
The next thing he knew, he hit the floor rolling, tangled up in a mess of dog and woman.
“What the hell did you do that for?” Devlin asked her, shoving himself out from under them. “The bastard pulled a knife on you!”
Her attention was divided between wrestling the thrashing dog and the man who was now putting away his knife as though nothing had ever happened. “He pulled a knife on Rocky,” she said, panting from effort. “And you’d have gotten killed if you’d reached him.”
“Purely by accident,” Sabatino added, his dark eyes glimmering, looking pleased at the thought. “I was merely protecting myself. Gabriela, put the animal out now.”
Gabrielle and Devlin rose together, her hand still wrapped in the dog’s collar. “Do it,” Devlin said to her, not taking his eyes off Sabatino. “While Sabatino and I have a discussion about the proper time and place to see your lawyer.”
She started to argue, but Rocky began barking and growling again. Devlin looked at Gabrielle and saw her flash a warning glare at Sabatino before she dragged the dog away.
“The knife,” Devlin said. “Take it out real slow and drop it.”
The bastard laughed. “Why? Are you going to make me, pretty boy?”
His hand twitched with the need to slam his fist into that sneering face but he controlled it, knowing the man’s game.
“It’s a simple matter to call the cops and tell them you held your lawyer at knifepoint, Sabatino.”
The other man shrugged. “Very well. If you insist.” With exaggerated care, he reached in and slowly withdrew the knife, then flung it down with a practiced twist of his wrist. The tip of the blade stuck in the wood floor, quivering an inch in front of Devlin’s bare foot.
“Devlin.” Gabrielle’s voice sliced through the tension vibrating like the knife blade stuck in the floor between the two men. They both looked at her. “This is my house. I’d appreciate you letting me handle this.”
Let her handle it? Sure he would—right after he ground the bastard’s smile into his face and then ripped him apart limb by limb. He still hadn’t recovered from thinking Sabatino intended the knife for Gabrielle.
She either read his mind or the expression on his face, because she stepped between them before he could do anything. “What do you want?” she asked Sabatino.
“A moment with you alone.”
“No,” Devlin said, his jaw clenched. “No way in hell.”
Smiling derisively, Sabatino spoke to Gabrielle. “Quite the jealous lover, isn’t he? Understandable, though, with a woman of your…” He looked her over leisurely, obviously taking note of her tousled hair, her robe, her bare feet, and finished, “Your many charms, signorina. Tanta magnifica?—”
Devlin had started forward, intending to rip Sabatino’s slimy tongue out of his mouth, but Gabrielle slapped her hand on his arm and gripped it tightly, restraining him as she interrupted Sabatino herself.
“Say what you want and then get out,” she said flatly. “And don’t contact me at home about your case.”
“Ah, but you see, cara,” he said silkily, “I didn’t come about my case.”
“Cut to the chase, Sabatino,” Devlin said, his temper spiking into the stratosphere. “Why are you here?”
“For the usual reasons one goes to see a beautiful woman,” he answered Devlin. Their gazes held for a tight moment, then Sabatino turned to Gabrielle. “I wasn’t aware that you were—” he spread his hands, gesturing at Devlin “—involved with someone.”
“Now you know,” Devlin said, wondering how long he would last before he went for Sabatino’s throat. “So you can leave.”
“My apologies for the intrusion.” Sabatino inclined his head and bent to pick up his knife.
“Leave it.”
“And if I don’t?” he asked, one eyebrow lifting arrogantly.
“Don’t forget I’m a lawyer, Sabatino. I can get as down and dirty as I need to.”
To Devlin’s surprise, Sabatino left the knife without further argument. At the door he gazed at Gabrielle for a long moment. “Always the pretty boy, isn’t it, Gabriela? I would have thought after?—”
She interrupted him with a few words, spoken softly in Italian.
Devlin had no idea what she said, but obviously Sabatino did.
His mouth snapped shut, and he and Gabrielle stared at each other while silence ticked by with the sort of tension that pervaded a courtroom before a murder verdict is read.
Without another word, Sabatino turned his back and left.